The purpose of this project is to design and test strategies that may help to prevent adolescents from becoming cigarette smokers. Three studies, including a survey and two experiments, have been conducted thus far. In the survey, 343 7th graders completed a questionnaire measuring reported levels of smoking and other variables hypothesized to predict smoking behavior. Discriminant analyses showed that three variables: the number of friends who smoked; subject's intentions to smoke; and the number of older siblings who smoked; correctly identified 89 percent of the smokers and 92 percent of the nonsmokers. In the first experiment, 7th graders publicly committed themselves to nonsmoking by appearing on a videotape and talking about why they would not become smokers. Relative to control conditions, this manipulation failed to affect subject's intentions to smoke. In a second experiment, subjects viewed videotapes that either described the immediate health consequences of smoking a single cigarette and/or long term consequences of smoking. The immediate effects manipulation strongly affected attitudes towards smoking and, in addition, it was remembered better than the long term information. Finally, both kinds of information reduced subject's intentions to smoke in the future; and, the combined message proved to be the most effective on this measure.